Lord Morris of Aberavon: My Lords, two issues concern me today. The first is the legality of the Syrian air strikes, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, for his remarks. In the past, he has made important contributions in this field in the other place. One of the most painful and onerous decisions that a Prime Minister has to take is to commit British troops to an act of war. Perhaps the use of air power may be easier than committing troops on the ground. We have examples of a reluctance to do this, particularly on the part of the Americans in recent years.
Under the charter, there are two grounds for such actions. The first is self-defence and the second is a decision of the UN Security Council. In recent years and now, because of the veto, it is hopeless to expect  authority from the Security Council. As the Attorney-General, I faced this problem in Kosovo, and I believe that I also drafted the rules of engagement in Sierra Leone. In Kosovo, there was abundant evidence of the need for action: evidence of large-scale ethnic cleansing, murder and rape, causing suffering to many thousands. The precedents for acting without the authority of the United Nations were few. My Conservative predecessor had advised on the setting up of no-fly zones in the Iraq war to protect the Kurds in the north and the Marsh Arabs in the south. These were passive actions on our part. Our proposed action in Kosovo for large-scale NATO raids, repeated over what I believe were 69 days, was aggressive and of a different kind from the passive action for which I had some precedents. It was aggressive action, although I was persuaded against my better judgment by the former Attorney-General, Mr Dominic Grieve, to use as a substitute the word “proactive” in my book, otherwise it might not have been published.
Our Ministers and our Armed Forces have to obey international law. They needed my advice to give them the security that they were acting legally. The Prime Minister has repeated almost word for word the three conditions for action set out in my book. The first is widespread humanitarian distress, the second is that there is no practical alternative, and the third is that the use of force has to be proportionate and, in my words, the minimum necessary to achieve our objective. She has quoted, “These are the same criteria for the legal justification for the Kosovan action”. I earnestly hope that the support of the Prime Minister will not damage my future career.
As I told the House on Monday, legal advice cannot always be certain, but I presume that the Attorney-General believed that he had a respectable legal argument or, as is sometimes said, an arguable case, which would be enough to satisfy the Armed Forces that they were acting legally. In international law, I could not go further than that. I am comforted that some distinguished academic lawyers have expressed their dissent. That most eminent of lawyers, the late Lord Bingham, in his book The Rule of Law, went no further than to comment that the doctrine of overwhelming humanitarian disaster is controversial. That was the only comment he made in a detailed analysis of the law generally. Having warned my Prime Minister of the possibility of legal challenge, it transpired that I had to act as leading counsel for the United Kingdom to respond to the challenge of an action by Yugoslavia against the United Kingdom along with, I believe, eight other NATO countries as defendants, before the International Criminal Court at The Hague. It was Yugoslavia’s attempt to stop the bombing by getting an injunction so to do. To my regret, the court did not deliver judgment on the legality of our actions. I trust that the Attorney-General, in his advice to Ministers, dealt with the possibility of a challenge by a country with an appropriate status before the court.
The mischief we are dealing with is the abhorrent use of chemical weapons, banned by the consensus of the international community under the Geneva Convention protocol in 1928. Some 10 years ago, I had the pleasure of addressing the Organisation for  the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague. The spirit of the conference for maintaining the ban on chemical weapons was absolutely solid and therefore we must be very careful that there is no departure from that. The charter of the United Nations regrettably does not provide adequate cover where a wrong-doing state has the umbrella support of a veto-wielding nation. That goes to the very heart of the problem in Kosovo and now. In Cape Town 10 years ago and in St Petersburg last October, I tried to raise before the committee of the Inter-Parliamentary Union the need to reform the charter of the United Nations. That was a bridge too far for other countries, and perhaps ourselves.
My second point concerns the need for the approval of the House of Commons. Given the heavy build-up of briefing over seven days, the element of surprise would not have been lost in any event. They would have lost nothing except the grim possibility of losing the vote in the House of Commons if it were consulted. This is the real reason the House of Commons was not consulted. In February 2006, Lord Mayhew of Twysden and I, both former Attorney-Generals, gave evidence to your Lordships’ Constitution Committee. At the time it was engaged in investigating evidence for its report, Waging War: Parliament’s Role and Responsibility. We both came to the conclusion that the use of the royal prerogative to go to war, save in exceptional circumstances and emergencies, was outdated. We agreed that the consent of the House of Commons should be required first. The committee accepted our advice. A convention was established by the decisions of three Prime Ministers, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron, to consult the House of Commons. Given that committing our Armed Forces is so fundamental, I do not believe that the Government were right to put the convention to one side and not get the support of the House of Commons.
I end with what I believe was the most important statement made in the debate in the other place: what next?

Lord Suri: My Lords, I thank my noble friends Lord Ahmad and Lord Howell for arranging this important debate. The attempted assassination of the Skripals was an unjust act, an act against international law and an outrage to this country. The invasion of Ukraine and subsequent annexation of the Crimea was also an unjust act against international law and an outrage against the international community. Russia is a state which has ceased to obey international law. It is rogue, it is criminal and it is dangerous. It strikes at our institutions as well as our citizens. I do not know whether it managed to spread misinformation during any recent elections here, but I do know that its channels, Sputnik and Russia Today, are pure propaganda. No Member of this or the other place should feel comfortable appearing on them. That the former First Minister of Scotland feels entitled to work for a Kremlin-funded channel is nothing short of a disgrace.
I feel great relief that the international community rallied around the UK in our time of great need following the Salisbury attack. Even in New Zealand, where there were no spies to expel, we benefited from international solidarity. Some had assumed that Brexit would blunt our ability to marshal support from our European allies, but we found good will when we were under severe pressure. Russia threatens not only the UK but a great many other of our European allies, especially in the Balkans. The most effective deterrent is of course hard military power. That is why I am strongly in favour of a greater British military presence  in the Balkans and eastern Europe. Russia must not get the impression that NATO solidarity will be undermined. The Balkans have made a conscious choice to buy into the western organisations that they can, and they deserve our support.
On military action, I will be glad to join other noble Lords who support the Prime Minister’s decision to launch carefully targeted strikes on strategic targets in Syria. It is a clear breach of international and humanitarian law to use chemical weapons on one’s citizens and there needed to be a message that this conduct was unacceptable. I do not support full-scale military engagement, but I think this served as a grim warning to President Assad and his Kremlin backers. As for Russia, I support the ramping up of targeted sanctions on individuals and firms shown to be complicit in Russia’s grotesque foreign policy. However, as I have noted before in this House, Brexit has put the ability of the EU to apply targeted sanctions into some doubt. There are civil servants, currently split between the Foreign Office, Treasury and Department for International Trade, who conduct sanctions policy on our behalf and for the EU. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that we will continue to assist the EU on sanctions policy during the period of the transition agreement and after our withdrawal?
A strong network of intelligence also helps to keep us safe. Often, intelligence can be more strategic than better weaponry, and we ought to be armed with both. Intelligence sharing is vital to that. In Europol, we benefit from a large pool of intelligence and secure channels, enabling us to share ours with relevant actors. This is an EU institution, and we do not yet know what our future relationship with it will be, despite it being crucial to our future. Can the Minister update us on what steps are being taken to ensure that the UK is as able to share and receive intelligence after Brexit?